Over 70 percent of Syrian refugees in Lebanon live below poverty line: UN

The United Nations (UN) says more than 70 percent of the Syrians who have taken refuge in Lebanon are virtually living in destitution.

According to the UN survey, dubbed the Vulnerability Assessment of Syrian Refugees, which was published on Monday, 70.5 percent of the Syrian refugees in Lebanon continue to live below the poverty line and remain “highly vulnerable to external shocks and reliant on humanitarian assistance to survive.”

The survey, which is conducted annually in Lebanon by the World Food Program, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), further showed that 34 percent of the Syrian refugee families in Lebanon are food insecure. The figure marks an 11-percent rise compared to 2015.

“The findings are a reminder to all of us that a significant share of Syrian households in Lebanon are doing all they can with limited means to keep their children healthy and safe,” UNICEF’s representative in Lebanon, Tanya Chapuisat, said.

“For those who have lived through the violence in Syria and endure hardship in the host country, health care, food, emotional support and education are simply vital,” she said.

Lebanon, with a population of less than five million, is hosting approximately 1.1 million refugees from Syria, which amounts to around one in five people in the country, according to Amnesty International.

Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011.

According to a recent estimate by UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, more than 400,000 people have been killed in the conflict in Syria.

Millions of Syrians have been fleeing the conflict in their home country to neighboring states as well as elsewhere in the world.